Now that I left Tokyo I’m navigating for myself again, which is a challenge here! As soon as I thought I had the train system figured out, I had to transfer at a small station that had a completely different system! The Japanese that I have interacted with (mostly the ticketing people at the stations and staff at restaurants) speak maybe 5 or 10 words of English, if any. However they have been extremely patient and helpful, playing my game of pointing, writing down times and numbers, and miming. It has been a rather fun …
Mongolia Part 4: Eagle Hunters
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So I left off my last Mongolia post at Erlich the eagle hunters’s home. This was the highlight of our trip. As I said before, we asked him dozens of questions about his eagle, their training, his past, and the community. The next day we were supposed to get a short demonstration of him calling his eagle off the barn wall and then head to a throat singer’s home on our way back to the city. But we were all so enthralled by the eagle that we decided as a group to spend the day …
Japan: Tokyo & Nikko
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As expected, this has been a huge change from Mongolia. Even my mindset on my way here was different. I wrote this on my plane out of Mongolia:
“I am feeling big, and full of emotion from a comfortable place somewhere in the center of my chest. I am on my flight from UB to Beijing. For the first time in a month I have had regular internet access and so have restarted the endless parade of ‘what if’s and ‘where to’s. Locating the hostel in Kamakura, Japan on the map. Searching for the cheapest flights …
Mongolia Part 3: Western
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Western Mongolia is awesome! I met with my new tour group in UB the night before we caught a plane west to Ölgii. Our driver from the tour company picked us up at the airport and brought us to town to pick up our guide/translator, cook, and supplies. We went to the museum in town to learn about traditional clothing and the fauna of the area, and then went 100 km to our first Kazakh family home.
90% of the population in this province are Kazakhs, descended from migrants here. They speak the Kazakh …
Mongolia: The Scoop
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My last posts have been manic, “I need to post SOMETHING with my 2 hours of internet so they know I’m alive!!” Maybe you’ve noticed. Now that I have some time and I’m not worried about my battery dying, I’ll give a more detailed description. This is mostly a stream of thought about what I’ve learned, to give you a rough idea about Mongolia if you are like I was and know little about it. Admittedly some of this is probably wild generalization, but it is what I have experienced or been told be Mongolians …